iOS Dock Cable Glows With MagSafe-Like Charging LEDs

Aleratec’s Charge-Glo dock cable has a very simple yet very neat gimmick: like the MagSafe charger you have for your MacBook, it sports an LED in the plug, and this LED changes color to show charging status. No more tapping at your iPhone’s home button to see if it has done charging.

Better yet, it costs just $20, which is better than Apple’s offering. Hook it up to your device, or to your device via the appropriate dock, and the LED will glow red as it charges. When done, the color changes to blue.

I’m almost certain that Aleratec’s engineers haven’t sweated over the choice of LED color like Apple’s have, and that instead of the pleasingly restful hues of the MagSafe you will instead have to put up with the usual blinkenlight horror show, but the utility is clear.

I’d order one right now if a) I didn’t already have like 20 cables in a box and b) I wasn’t sure that Apple was going to ditch the current dock connector design in a couple of weeks.